


Together, Apart

by waterbearwaltz



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 2020 broke me, F/M, Kataang - Freeform, Kataang Valentine's Bash 2021, Kataang Week, Katara (Avatar)-centric, i can only write sad things and porn now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29433222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbearwaltz/pseuds/waterbearwaltz
Summary: Written for the Kataang Valentine's Bash 2021. Prompt pair: Together and Apart.Katara and Aang deal with an outbreak of illness in the Earth Kingdom.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35
Collections: Kataang Valentine's Bash 2021





	1. Chapter 1

Katara held her hands over the young girl’s chest, focusing the water’s energy into a living swirl of light. She felt chi swell where she held the water, and the skin flushed as blood followed suit. Shae breathed a bit faster, but didn’t stir. She was used to this now, they’d been at it for months. Slowly, Katara felt something like a well filling beneath her fingers, and a sudden rush as the energy began to flow again on its own, unimpeded by tissue that had been dying just an hour earlier. 

This was so different from the healing she’d done during the war. Broken bones, burned skin, injuries that she could see and touch and understand. When she’d worked on Sokka’s broken leg, it was like the fragments of bone ached to join back together, they just needed a little push. It seemed so much easier, in retrospect. Then again, maybe those injuries had just been more spread out in time.

Katara sat back on her heels and let out a breath, slipping the water back into the bowl beside her. The sun was just dipping below the tree line, filling the makeshift hospital tent with warm orange light. Her eyes moved over the empty beds, it was the most deserted she’d seen the place since she arrived. An exhausted smile pulled at her lips. “I think that’s enough for today, Shae.”

The girl opened her eyes and shot Katara a mischievous grin. “Can I show you something, Yisheng?” she asked, using the colloquial term for healer in this part of the Earth Kingdom. 

“Sure,” Katara replied with the same tired smile. Shae rolled off the mat and onto her feet, slipping out of the tent into the gathering night. Katara stood in the doorway and watched her young patient rock back on one foot and launch into a set of cartwheels with a breathless little shriek. 

“Are you watching? Are you watching?” 

Katara laughed. “I’m watching, Shae. Be careful though, you’ll tire yourself out!”

“No I won’t I’m completely--” Shae’s argument was cut off by a sharp fit of coughs, and she grasped her knees to steady herself. Katara rushed forward and slipped a steady arm around her. 

“Come on, let’s get you home, your mom will be worried.”

Shae leaned on her as they walked, and when she spoke again her voice was breathy but excited. “You know what would help her worry less? if you tell her how much better I’m doing. I mean, if I can do six whole cartwheels I’m definitely healed enough to play with Sonna and Jai tomorrow, right?”

“I’ll talk to her meimei, but we still have a ways to go before you’re better.”

\--

When they’d first arrived in Dei Shung, it was to help fly healers in from the north and distribute aid from the Fire Nation. The reports of illness and unrest in the town hadn’t prepared them for the devastation they found when they got there. Katara and Sokka got the healers set up while Aang and Toph met with the mayor about alleviating the panic that had gripped the town. They broke up frenzied mobs, bent makeshift shelters to replace buildings that had been destroyed, anything they could think of that might help restore order. Toph and a couple of her metal bending students got to work chasing off the bandits who were circling the town like vultures, picking off the weak as they fled. 

Sokka was the first to take ill, just a few days after they arrived. For him it was fever, with a blotchy red rash creeping up from under the collar of his tunic. Katara caught it fast, thank the spirits, and sent him away along with anyone else who wasn’t essential. This wasn’t the manageable illness they’d been expecting to find, and it was just too dangerous to have anyone exposed to who didn’t need to be. She tried to send Aang with them, but it was pointless. 

“If I was staying, would you leave?” he asked. They both knew the answer to that. His expression was soft, but Katara had learned the subtle signs of his resolve. The slightly furrowed brow, the edge of intensity to his gaze, his grip on her hand just a little bit tighter than it needed to be, as though she might try to physically force him onto the airship. For all the airbender in him, he’d learned to be immovable when he needed to be. So they stood together as the ship left the dock, ferrying their friends back to safety along with anyone healthy enough to pack up their lives and flee.

The next few weeks were a blur. Katara spent all day in the healing tents raking water along body after body, feeling like she was trying to keep an entire town from drowning. Sometimes she wondered if she was making any difference at all. At night Aang would settle behind her in their room, and they’d talk quietly about their days while he worked the knots out of her neck. The first time she lost a patient, she cried the whole night. The next day, she lost three more. 

“Remember when you told me about the night Avatar Roku died?” she whispered into his neck one night after she was too exhausted to cry anymore. He pulled away just enough to look at her. Their bed was pushed up to the window and the night was clear and bright and she saw the glint of unshed tears in his eyes. He nodded, brushing hair from her damp face, brow tense with concern. 

“This feels like that. Like fighting...I don’t know, a force of nature. It just keeps coming, Aang. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stop it.”

“No one’s expecting you to stop it alone.” He kissed her forehead and fell quiet for a moment, considering. ”Do you want to leave? It’s ok if you do. I can stay behind or come with you, back to Ba Sing Se, or wherever you want to go.” Another pause, and then, more quietly, “I’m worried about what this is doing to you, Katara.” 

She was deeply ashamed that this thought had already crossed her mind, a few days ago at the bedside of a young man about her age. He had broad shoulders and a deep laugh, and spent the first day cracking jokes with the healers and offering his help with the older patients. Then, all at once, it just ripped through him. By the time Katara got to him, there was nothing she could do. Her eyes began to sting again but she set her jaw and shook her head. “I can’t leave these people. Even if I can’t stop this, I have to try. They need every healer they can get.”

He pulled her against him, one arm tight around her back and the other cradling the back of her head. “I love you. And I’m here for you, whatever you need. We’ll get through this, I promise.”

“I love you too.”

About a month after they arrived, Amka, one of the older healers, got sick. They took turns caring for her amidst all the other patients. Her daughter, Nukka, worked on her the most. It was always fastest with the elderly. A quick funeral behind the hospital was all they could manage. Katara asked Nukka if she wanted to say a few words, but she was beyond speech. In the end, they all stood quietly around the grave before breaking off, a few at a time, to return to work. Katara stayed the longest, one hand rubbing Nukka’s back as she sobbed, the other gripping Aang’s so tight it hurt.

The next day she woke up to Aang shivering next to her in bed.

“No” a hoarse whisper tore out of her mouth. She could feel her heart pounding in every part of her body as she ripped the blankets off him and rolled him onto his back. He moaned groggily, fighting to wake up. Her breath quickened. He was usually up with the sun. 

There were pins and needles in her hands as she ran them over his chest, arms, neck, checking for the telltale rash. She pushed him onto his side to check his back. Nothing. 

“Katara, what are you doing?” his voice thick with sleep. 

“This is not happening” she muttered, more to herself than him. One hand pulled the water from her satchel across the room while the other yanked him down the bed so she could straddle him more easily. It started in the lungs, if she could kill it there they’d have a chance. 

“Katara!” He caught her wrists and the spirit water dropped, soaking them both. Her eyes snapped to his. He was wide awake now, alert and pale and a little panicked. Her heart was beating so hard it made her head spin and her skin feel raw. 

“Fever,” she choked out, suddenly aware she was crying. “You have a fever, I have to--” she shook his hands off hers and pulled the water off the bed and out of their clothing, coaxing it back to a gentle glow.

“Katara, it’s ok, I feel fine. This might not even be--”

“I know exactly what it is” she spat, feeling the familiar blocked energies in his chest, the fluid pooling in his lungs. She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been, she should have insisted he leave with Sokka and the others. She should have forced him, begged him, tricked him, anything to get him on that ship. Her vision blurred and she impatiently blinked away tears, struggling to keep her concentration. A barking sob came from somewhere, maybe her, and his hands were on hers again, bending the water into a bowl on the nightstand and gathering her toward him. 

“No, Aang I have to--” 

“I know Sweetie, just take a minute, please.” His voice was thin and had a pleading edge to it that just unnerved her more.

“There’s no time, I need to start before it spreads!” She had to stop to suck in air between words. She felt like she was fighting a battle and losing, struggling just to keep feet underneath her. 

“We have a minute. Please Katara, you’re scaring me. Just breath. Please. For me.”

Katara wanted to argue but couldn’t find the air to get the words out. She tried to pull back but her limbs felt thick and numb and her muscles weren’t responding. Another of those barking sobs scraped out of her chest and he lifted himself against the headboard, tucking her against him and stroking her back, her hair, her arms. 

“Try to breathe with me ok? In and out. Just match my breath. That’s it. Nice and slow.” Her cheek was pressed against his chest and she rose and fell with him as he breathed. No matter how much air she sucked in it felt like she was suffocating. She breathed anyway, matching his rhythm as well as she could manage. Bit by bit, feeling returned to her limbs, and the vice around her chest began to dissolve. His heart beat against her ear and she turned her face into it, trying to breath in his skin, tasting the sweat on his chest. 

“I can’t lose you too,” she whispered into him. He kissed the top of her head. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he rumbled beneath her. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m the avatar. It’s pretty hard to kill me. Plus, the best healer in the world is totally in love with me, so I think I’m pretty safe.”

She heard the smile in his voice and felt a hot surge of anger. She pushed herself up enough to see his face. 

“I couldn’t save Amka or Aia, or Sammi, or Lee’s twins, or--” she broke off, the dead stretching out before her. She didn’t even know all their names anymore. The anger left as quickly as it had come. She let her head drop back against his chest, as tired as she could ever remember being. 

“I know. I know. This is a terrible tragedy. But you’re not a god, Sweetie. No one expects you to save every person who gets sick. But think of everyone you did save. Katara, how many people are alive right now because of you?”

They were quiet for a few minutes, breathing together on the bed. Finally, she reached up and kissed him softly. His face was hot under her hands. “Please. I need to start working on you now.” 

“I know. Just take care of yourself too, ok? I’m going to be fine. I’m in good hands.” The way he looked at her with total trust twisted something in her chest. Her throat felt tight and she cleared it to push back the tears.

“Lay down.”

She worked through the day and well into the night. He slept fitfully for most of it as the fever crested and she fought to keep it at bay, to keep the sickness from settling deeper into him. She’d caught it early, she thought. He was muddled, but not incoherent. He couldn’t have been running a temperature for more than a few hours.

Moving over his prone form like this reminded Katara far too much of the weeks after Ba Sing Se fell, and she did her best to seal that thought tightly in the back of her mind. Coming undone again would only hurt him, he needed her calm, focused, and attentive. 

He was larger than her now, more difficult to maneuver, but the ebb and flow of his energies felt the same. There was an intimacy here that never occurred to her with her other patients. She was reaching inside him, guiding the most basic systems in his body. Under different circumstances it might have been beautiful.

A day passed, maybe two. Katara grew more and more tired until she passed through tiredness altogether. Being immersed in the rhythms of someone else’s body for so long, it was easy to forget her own. Like after Ba Sing Se fell. No, not that. Here. This. Him. 

Finally, when she’d done everything she could think of twice over, she paused, blinking blearily out the window at the rising sun. There was a cold bowl of soup on the nightstand. Someone must have brought it to her, but she couldn’t remember when. She checked Aang one last time and collapsed next to him, grateful for the darkness that swallowed her.


	2. Chapter 2

Katara woke up disoriented, the room lit with cool dim light that could have been dawn or dusk. After a moment, the previous days came back to her and she shot up in bed, wide awake, reaching for Aang. 

“Hey, I’m here, it’s ok” he caught her hand and pulled her toward him. His skin was warm but not hot and she grasped his face in her hands, searching for signs of the muddledness that had so unnerved her the previous day. 

“How do you feel?”

“Great. Amazing actually. I feel like I slept for a hundred years. Again.” His smile was lopsided as he ducked his head to catch her eye, but she was already pushing his shoulders down onto the bed and reaching for her satchel. 

“Lay back.”

“Katara, I’m fine, see?” He pulled her hand back to his face to feel that his fever had broken, turning his head to brush her palm with his lips. “Good as new.”

“Please, I have to be sure.”

Katara took her time checking him over, feeling for any lingering blockage or heat, any of the signs she’d learned treating the villagers. She felt him watching her as she probed along his body, spirit water shimmering between them. She thought about the intimacy of this again as she dragged the water down the side of his hip, of her energies reaching out to entwine with his, and back up, across his ribs toward his throat. He gave a relaxed sigh and closed his eyes.

“That feels amazing,” he murmured. 

“Turn over” she whispered. 

He settled onto his stomach and she moved to straddle his waist, carefully going over the deepest places in his lungs along his back where the illness often held out the longest. There was nothing, just the strong hum of his body under her fingers and she felt a surge of impossible relief. Her breath hitched and he stirred under her, twisting between her thighs until they were face to face. She guided the water away with an unconscious wave and pressed her hands to his chest, feeling his heart beat strong against her palms. He slid his hands up her arms and she closed her eyes. Even without the spirit water, she’d been so connected with him for the past few days that she thought she could still feel the energy humming under her hands, strong and clear except for where it twisted and dipped around his scar. 

“You’re ok” she breathed, and realized she’d been holding that breath for some time. 

“I’m ok” he echoed, scooting back to sit against the bed frame, bending his knees to cradle her between his thighs and chest. He gave her a small reassuring smile and laced his fingers through hers. She met his soft grey eyes and her mind ticked back to all the dead, to everyone she’d been unable to save. Half those who’d come to her? A third? She had a sudden, blazingly clear vision of waking up alone to a horrible stillness instead of his warm presence. A rough sob tumbled out of her and she smashed her mouth against his with desperation that surprised them both. 

They hadn’t been intimate in the month they’d been in Dei Shung, with tragedy raging around them and Katara a bundle of frayed nerves by the end of her days in the hospital. Sex was still relatively new for them, and it was easy and familiar for her to curl around him at night without expectations. If Aang felt differently he never let her see it, but the intensity of his response now made her wonder. 

He opened his mouth to her immediately, pulling her against him and tangling his hands into her unbound hair. She slid her tongue against his insistently, hands around the back of his head, trying to get closer, to climb inside, to feel as much warm, reassuring skin against hers as she could. She broke away just enough to yank her tunic over her head and they gasped against each other’s lips when she pressed her bare chest to his.

Aang’s hands explored her upper body, and she arched up to give him access. He grazed her hard nipples as he glided up and down her torso, and she felt goosebumps shiver across her skin. It wasn't enough, and she caught his hands and pressed them hard against her breasts. He groaned and complied, kneading them firmly before breaking their kiss to pull one tight brown nipple into his mouth. She gasped, a familiar heat blooming between her thighs, and ground down into his lap. His hands found her hips, breath hot against her breast, dragging her more firmly against him. She moaned at the contact, reveling in the sensations firing through her. He felt so warm and solid beneath her, but something else too. Fragile. That sent a different shiver through her. 

"I thought I'd lost you," she whispered, her voice breaking on the words. He raised his head from her breast and took her face in his hands. His lips were swollen, his face flushed, pupils dilated. He looked rumpled and breathless and more beautiful than she’d ever seen him. 

"You didn't, Katara. I'm right here. I’ll always be right here." He kissed her palm, the crook of her elbow, her shoulder. His open lips dragged across her collarbone and found the sensitive spot near her throat, gently worrying the skin with his lips and teeth, sending hot ripples of pleasure through her body as she rocked against him. Her breath was coming in pants now, mind full of his mouth on her skin and the sweet friction between them. 

"I missed this" she hissed in his ear, rolling her hips harder against his. His breath hitched and his hands tightened on her.

"Me too," he rasped against her neck in a low, unstable voice she'd only heard a handful of times. The sound of him like that made her whole body throb for him. She reached between them, but when her fingers found his waistband he caught them. 

"Not yet" he murmured, eyes closed. She could tell from his breathing that he was trying to calm himself down. "You first."

She shook her head. "Please Aang, just I need to feel you," her voice was breathless and pleading. His eyes snapped open and she could tell from the way he dragged them from her mouth, down over her body that he was teetering on as precarious an edge as her. 

He nodded, a little dazed, and pulled her against him, crushing her mouth to his in a kiss that almost hurt. She pressed back harder, trying to devour him, nails biting into the back of his neck. His hands found the ties of her leggings and tugged, and she reluctantly rolled away to wriggle out of them. When she turned back to him he'd made quick work of his pants, and he was watching her with a heavy, dark gaze that sent another stab of desire through her. 

She raised up on her knees and slid back into his lap, reveling in the hungry way he looked at her. His heart hammered against her hands as she ran them down his chest and stomach to find the base of him. His eyes slid closed and he groaned low in his throat as she eased him into her.

She shuddered with pleasure. This was what she’d needed, the feeling of being full of him, surrounded by him. But now that she had it the need inside her just burned hotter and deeper. She slid her hands over his, rocking deliberately forward and back, gasping at the weight of him sliding inside her. His breath hitched and she kissed the sweat from his brow, driving abruptly down onto his lap with punishing strength. 

His eyes shot open with a surprised groan, finding her face. "This doesn't-- I'm not hurting you am I?" he gasped out, and she shook her head. 

"You feel amazing, just keep going." She pressed a deep, hungry kiss to his mouth and he eagerly returned it. "Please" she mewled against his lips before driving down onto him again. They both cried out as he filled her, and he grasped her hips almost hard enough to bruise. On her next thrust he snapped his hips up to meet hers with just as much ferocity and she thought she might burst from the sensation. "Yes" she moaned into his mouth as he caught her lips again. A sheen of sweat covered his face and the salt on his lips tasted like sex and life and him. They fell into rhythm together. It was deep and unyielding and a little bit frantic, the strength of it knocking desperate animal sounds from both of them. 

Katara was beside herself, felt nothing but him, driving into her, all around her. The taste of his skin on her tongue and the smell of him in the air, mixed with the humid, sharp scent of them coming together. Her head dropped to the side and he pressed his mouth fiercely to her throat, taking a mouthful of her flesh as he drove up into her. Desire coiled tighter and tighter inside her belly and she moaned his name in a voice he almost didn't recognize. He gasped, her barefaced need almost as overwhelming as her wet heat wrapped around him.

"I won't last much longer like this" he panted against her, almost pained.

"Neither will I," she answered, tilting her hips to take him in even deeper. 

They were both beyond words then, hips working against each other in frantic thrusts, her pleasure building in her until she felt drunk with it, nothing in her mind but the place where their bodies met, the wet friction that shot wild electricity through her, the need to take him into her completely. It was the sight of him that did it, so undone, almost wild, panting and thrusting up into her. 

She twitched and writhed against him as her orgasm took her. He wasn't far behind, and when he felt her quivering around him he came with a cry that was almost surprise, losing his rhythm as his hips jerked desperately up into her tight body. 

She collapsed against his chest, both of them shivering occasionally as the aftershocks of their orgasms rippled through them. After a breathless minute he slid his arms around her, stroking her back and hair. 

"That was...different" he rumbled beneath her, a bit of laughter and a bit of awe coloring his voice. She peeled her face off his sweaty chest and peered up at him, aware of how silly it was that she was suddenly shy.

"Good different or bad different?" she asked, a little uncertain. 

"Good different! I mean, I didn't hurt you did I?" 

She shook her head no, smiling up at him. 

"Then definitely good different" he laughed, capturing her mouth in a sound kiss. After a moment they separated. "Are you ok Katara? I've been so worried about you."

"I will be ok." she said, holding back the end of her thought, wanting to enjoy this moment with him before the fight she knew was coming.

_I'll be ok once you leave._


	3. Chapter 3

Aang’s first thought when he opened his eyes was how a hog-monkey could have gotten into his bedroom. The next was why Katara found it so funny. Hog-monkeys were dangerous, especially in an enclosed space. Blinking away the last of his sleepy haze, he sat up and was greeted with a plate of bao pressed into his hands by his laughing girlfriend. He cocked his head and smiled, trying to think of the last time he’d seen her laugh. The trip from Ba Sing Se, when she and Sokka wrestled in Appa's saddle for the last piece of seal jerky. 

“You sound like a pack of polar bear dogs”, she giggled at him from her side of the bed, “you’d think you hadn’t eaten in a month.” He tore into a bao with exaggerated relish. 

“I’m a growing boy” he declared around a large mouthful, and she smacked his arm with a snort of partially-feigned disgust. “How long has it been? Since I got sick I mean.”

“About three days. Though you slept for 10 hours after...” she looked away and smiled, blushing a little. 

“I needed it.” he grinned. “Thanks, by the way”

“For...before?” Her blush intensified. 

“No!” he laughed. “Or yes,” he scratched the back of his neck bashfully, “but that’s not what I meant. For healing me. Thank you.” He reached out and squeezed her hand. 

"Of course," she squeezed back and her smile got a little sad. “It’s what I do.” 

He wasn’t sure how to take that, but before he could respond his eye caught his bag in the corner, apparently packed, with his glider and cloak against the chair next to it. Katara followed his gaze and sighed, and he felt her do that thing she did where she pulled away from him without moving a muscle. 

He turned to face her, suddenly serious. “What's going on?”

She frowned and looked intently at her lap. “I need you to leave Aang. I can’t do this with you here.”

“Katara I know things got scary but I’m fine now, really.”

Her eyes were sharp when she finally turned to him. “For how long? If you stay here, sleeping next to me every night, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Not necessarily. You still haven’t gotten it.”

“I got it the first week we were here!” she shot back in a burst of frustration. Aang looked at her like she'd slapped him and she winced, wanting to claw the words back into her mouth. 

“You what? Why didn't you tell me?” She shrugged, unsure how to answer this. To fill the silence, she found herself answering questions he hadn't asked.

“I found the spots when washing. I spend all day touching the sick, breathing their air, of course I got it. Most of us have.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the hospital, meaning the other healers. His dumbfounded expression hadn’t changed, and she found herself rambling. “I try to stay aware, check myself before I come back here. Heal anything that’s taken hold. It's not so hard.” She tried to shrug off his intense gaze.

“But Amka--”

“Amka was very old, and didn’t realize until it was too late. Once this thing spreads Aang...I’ve never seen anything like it. Never felt anything that..there’s a point where you just can’t come back. Where there’s not enough left of you to heal.” She paused, tears on her face out of nowhere. “That could have been you. If you hadn’t been sleeping next to me. If you’d stayed out with Appa that night, or I hadn’t woken up when I did--” Her voice broke and she shook her head. He reached for her and pulled her close, folding her against his chest and squeezing tight. Her voice was strong and full of bile when she spoke again. “I was so stupid to let you stay. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

“I chose to stay, Katara.” he answered gently. “I’m choosing to stay. I have a duty to these people.”

She pulled away and shot him a look. “You have a duty to the world, Aang. Dying here won’t maintain balance, it’ll create chaos. You want to stay because of me.”

He let out an exasperated puff of air. “Maybe I do! Katara, I’ve never seen you like this. Even during the war… Watching you in this much pain is unbearable. Everyday I feel like you’re just slipping further into this...I don’t know...this darkness! I can’t just leave you here.”

“I can do this Aang. I have to do this.”

“Then we’ll do it together.”

“No. I know I can do this, but only if you leave.” 

He shook his head, at a loss for what to say to make her understand that he couldn't.

She turned to face him more fully, chewing her lip the way she did when she was getting ready to say something she didn’t want to say. “Aang I didn’t leave this room for three days.”

He blinked, confused, but waited for her to continue.

“They need every healer they can get. All of us here and we’re still not enough, and I stayed here, with you, for three days.”

His eyes widened and he blinked slowly, unsure how this hadn’t occurred to him sooner. 

“And I would have stayed for longer. As long as it took. It wasn’t even a question.” She slipped her hand back into his and pulled it to her face. Just holding it there, feeling his skin on hers. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep from losing you. And that’s why I need you to go. I can’t abandon these people. And I think the only thing that can take me away from them is you.”

His eyes were wet now, and he felt his resolve starting to crumble. "Are you sure? Katara you're the strongest person I know, but everyone needs help sometimes. You don't have to do this alone."

"I won't be. The last few weeks, I don't know how I would have gotten through it without you. But now...I just need to know you're safe. There's nothing I can't do if I know you're safe."

"I know the feeling" He kissed her, slow and soft. When he broke away he whispered, "come with me." One hand was on her waist and the other entwined with hers. He sighed. He knew the answer before he asked the question. She'd never leave people who needed her if there was a chance she could help them, no matter how small. It was one of the things that had made Aang fall in love with her. Not the crush that bloomed the moment he saw her, but the deep, unshakeable love that grew in him over the first months they spent together. 

She tucked herself closer and he sighed into her hair, holding her very tightly against him. They were quiet for a long time. 

"We are going to have the absolute best night in the city when you get back." He finally said softly against her temple. She smiled. 

"Can we camp up by that ridge overlooking the city? The one with the ginkgo tree and that little river?"

"You read my mind."

"I'm gonna kick your butt at Water-Redemption"

Aang scoffed, "In your dreams. You're talking to the inventor of the game and the reigning champion."

"Psh. Avatar state wins don't count, using your past lives is cheating."

"You think I need the avatar state to best you?"

"Hmm, think? No, I don't think. I know, but that’s different."

"This is a lot of cocky talk for someone who lost a seal jerky battle to Sokka." That earned him a mock shocked gasp and a sharp pinch in the ribs. He grabbed her around the middle and flipped her back onto the bed, tickling her into a gasping fit of giggles that turned into an equally breathless reprise to their earlier lovemaking. 

\---  
An hour later they stood on the hill where Appa had been bedded down during their stay. The wind was chilly and damp and the light rain that had been on and off all day was threatening to start again. Katara hugged herself against it as Aang bent his few personal items up into the saddle and took her into his arms. 

“You’re always so warm” she muttered, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into his chest. 

“It’s a breathing technique,” he answered into her hair. “I can try to teach you sometime if you want. I’m not sure if you actually need to be an airbender to learn it.”

“I’d like that.” She smiled, enjoying this last moment of normalcy with her best friend. 

He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure.” 

They stood like that for a moment, arms around each other, faces close. Katara had a sudden, anxious impulse to check him over one last time, just in case, and regretted leaving her water satchel back in the room. She felt water weighing down the air around them, and her awareness slid easily out across it. This was new. She let her eyes slide closed, following it. The wet air moved in and out of their lungs, their clothes were woven with it, the earth under their feet heavy and damp. She turned her mind to Aang, curious. She felt along the edges of his body through the wet air, feeling like a ghost. It was different from what she sensed with the water from her satchel, fuzzier, like a drawing that had become wet or peering through a window in a storm. Blurry, but bright and whole. 

She pressed into him and found his fourth chakra, deep in his chest, the one that always shone brightest in him. She felt none of the wavering that had turned her stomach a few days earlier. She passed through his lungs next, strong and even, filling easily with air. There was no trace of the sickness, and she breathed out, reassured. But instead of pulling back, she let herself drift in him, combing over the muscles in his shoulders and back, his chest and arms. She’d never lingered like this in her sessions, and both their breaths quickened slightly as she explored. She slid back up his arms, across his chest, and grazed down his abdomen. He shivered and sighed, stroking her sides lightly with his thumbs. When she finally opened her eyes, she caught the last of a faint blue glow fading from the air around them, leaving him looking down at her with wonder.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he breathed, grinning. 

She smiled back. “Neither did I.”

“You’re amazing. These people are so lucky to have you here.” He swept her into a hug that lifted her off the ground and kissed her. “I’ll only be in Ba Sing Se. Write and I can be here in a day, two at the most” She nodded. He breathed deeper into his tightening chest, determined not to let this be a tearful goodbye. “I love you so much, and I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you too.”

“Take care of yourself.”

Her smile was thin but genuine. “I will,” she promised. 

Another quick kiss and he rode a small gust of air up onto Appa’s head and Katara gave her old friend a scratch on the cheek. 

“Take good care of him, ok Appa?” Appa grunted his agreement, and Aang took them up into the sky.


	4. Chapter 4

Aang’s diplomatic work was important to him, and he cared deeply about doing it well, but that wasn’t the only reason for his single-minded focus on Earth Kingdom politics when he returned to Ba Sing Se. He knew Katara would be ok. He knew it. She was the best healer he’d ever seen, and they’d been in plenty of more dangerous situations over the years. He had total faith in her ability to handle this. But knowing something and feeling the truth of it were different things, and his idle mind had taken to flights of anxiety he hadn’t experienced since the lead up to his fight with Ozai all those years ago. But he wasn’t a child anymore, and this time, instead of giving into it, he buried it under western Earth Kingdom trade agreements.

But immersing himself in work wasn’t as straightforward as he’d expected. Aang realized belatedly that somewhere along the way, a big part of thinking through a new problem had become discussing it with Katara. He found himself filing things away during meetings to ask her opinion on when he got home, only to remember. He tried to imagine what she would say about this or that proposal, but it wasn’t the same. Even after all these years together, she still surprised him, always thinking of things he never would. She rooted into solid ground when he could only evade and found flexibility when he thought there was only one path forward.

Trying to replicate her input was particularly hopeless, since even when he tried very earnestly to think of what she might say about King Kuei’s new trade policy, it quickly devolved into imagining the sweet way she frowned in concentration when she bent over scrolls in the evenings, the way she liked to tuck her legs up under her on the couch as she read, head on his shoulder, her tea cradled between them, how they’d laughed together about Ambassador Shu’s pompous, circuitous prose. She’d taken to reading in bed lately too, but only for pleasure; she was forever pushing official correspondence out of his hands when he brought it to bed with him. Boundaries, she said. This room was just for them. Was she reading in bed in Dei Shung? She hadn’t been before he left, too exhausted and distracted. There were times he had to fetch her from the hospital tents in the middle of the night to get her to sleep at all. He imagined her nodding off over a hospital cot, surrounded by the dying. He imagined her shivering with fever, alone and afraid. 

Sokka was no help, just as worried as Aang but worse at finding peace in it. Zuko was off in the Fire Nation, Toph occupied with her school’s expansion. Sometimes when Aang sat lost in thought at the guesthouse, he’d be jarred out of his anxious fog by Suki setting a hot cup of tea in front of him and giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. That meant more to him than he could properly express.

But even the worst days were better than the nights. Even if Katara hadn’t been in ever-present danger, nights would have been a particular challenge. 

Sleeping alone wasn’t something Aang was all that accustomed to. For most of his childhood he slept in the temple dormitories, long rooms with dozens of other children too young for their own quarters. After he woke up in the South Pole he spent a year camping with his friends, or, on the rare occasion they found indoor accommodation, sharing a room with them. 

After the war ended, his relationship with Katara fresh and tentative, he got his first real taste of sleeping by himself. It was a bizarre and isolating experience. He spent as many nights out with Appa or fading into sleep in common spaces as his friends milled around him as he did in his assigned quarters. It wasn’t until his relationship with Katara progressed to late-night visits that he started properly making use of his bed chambers. Maybe a year after that they finally lost their patience with sneaking around and his bed became their bed. He began to truly appreciate private sleeping quarters after that.

Now that she was gone, he reverted to old habits. Appa seemed surprised, but glad of the company. Aang spent long evenings at Iroh’s tea shop, helping out or just relaxing with a cup after the shop closed, playing pai sho late into the night to avoid going back to his room. Iroh never asked directly, but he seemed to understand Aang needed company at night, and was happy to have a partner with such an unconventional approach to the game. When Aang needed to talk about Katara, he drew him out with the occasional thoughtful question, but never pushed. They perfected a companionable silence. 

When Aang did eventually collapse into his bed, he was swept up by memories of her-- her hair spilling across him as she curled into his chest, his hands tracing the notches of her spine, the bleary way she looked for him when she first woke up, how she pressed against him when she wanted him in the night. The softness of her mouth, her skin, her heat. They’d been in Ba Sing Se for most of the last year, the longest they’d ever stayed anywhere, and everything about his room was about her. It was maddening. Any sleep Aang found there was restless and full of her. He gave into detailed fantasies about her homecoming that made him shiver when he remembered them the next day, during meetings about the new uprising in the east or the upcoming peace summit in the Fire Nation. 

“Avatar Aang, are you alright?” 

“What? No? Huh?” Aang stumbled, jarred out of an exquisitely detailed memory of Katara’s mouth. Three dignitaries eyed him with concern, and Aang averted his eyes, worrying irrationally that they might be able to tell what he’d been thinking about.

“He’s right, Avatar. You’re positively flushed. Are you entirely well?” Ambassador Shu leaned closer to examine Aang and he got a mouthful of the man’s cologne.

Aang twisted away and managed to stutter out that he was fine. He felt the blush on his cheeks grow even more viscous and considered bending the floor open to swallow him.

“Perhaps you better go home and rest. We can pick this up tomorrow.”

“Yes, maybe that would be best. Avatar, I’ll have my healer sent to--”

“Nope, no, please, I’m fine. No healer, totally fine, bye!” he called out over his shoulder, surreptitiously bending the air around him to speed his exit.   
Aang had never bolted out of a room so fast in his life, and that was saying something.

\---

Time had a way of compressing during long healing sessions. It reminded Katara of how Aang described his meditations into the spirit world. He could be gone for hours-- days once-- and have no sense of time passing at all. The months slipped by like that, and though she saved more than she lost, lives continued to slip through her hands. Aang was right, what he’d said about tragedy. You bend the flow of the flood a little, saving whoever you can. You try to let that be enough.

So Katara learned a different kind of mourning. She learned to feel death coming, to fight it with everything she had, and then to let go. Eventually, the passings weren’t surprises anymore. She could tell as soon as she laid her hands on a patient if they had a chance at walking back out of the hospital. It felt deeply wrong to know something so intimate and final with such certainty, but she couldn’t deny it, she could only find a way to live with it.

She spent her days in the hospital in a sort of trance, sensing with the water under her hands more than with her eyes. Sometimes, by the end of the day, she could feel the comings and goings in the tents without glancing up at all. The small part of her with the capacity to think about the future looked forward to talking to Toph about this next time they were together.

When something threatened to break her now, it was something small. Death flowed through the town like a river, and she’d learned to walk through it as well as she could, but once she found a child’s sock under an empty cot and almost screamed. She stumbled out into the night, fingers twisting into the frosted grass, breathing hard and deep, trying to pull the cold inside her to drive everything else out. 

When it was all too much, she tried to think of what Aang would suggest. That’s how she started bending practice with Sutha. She was the youngest healer there, just 15, with a loud voice, an easy laugh, and a spray of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Katara liked her right away, her brash manner reminded her a little of Toph, and her self-assuredness in the face of tragedy made Katara ache for the children she and her friends had been. She couldn’t believe, sparing gently with Sutha in the river one morning, how young the girl seemed. She was older than Katara had been when she’d fought in a war. She turned that thought over and over in her mind, waiting for it to seem less absurd. It never did.

Sutha looked so small standing in the currents, seemed so young when she laughed and sent waves barrelling towards Katara. She was only 3 years younger than Aang. That never seemed less absurd either. It wasn’t really a fair comparison though. She hadn't fully realized until after the war ended, but all they’d gone through had marooned them somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Aside from the six of them, her closest friend was probably Iroh. She wondered if Sutha and the other young healers here would feel the same, after all this ended. Katara found that thought inexpressibly sad.

Sutha was talented if untrained. She always went for power over precision, sending wave after wave after Katara but struggling to control a simple water whip. Katara pared things down to the basics, and they spent lots of time sending water back and forth between them, feeling the push and pull that was key to developing control. Bending practice in a river like this was something Katara had only ever done with Aang. Sometimes it made her miss him so much it physically hurt. Other times it made her feel close enough to touch him.

This was the first time they’d been apart for more than a few days since they met. She kept waiting for her body to remember he was gone, but it seemed that wasn’t going to happen. She never realized it before, but she reached for him a couple times a night, just to make sure he was there. Now when this happened, she woke up to the strangeness of being alone in her bed, always confused for a few moments before remembering. His presence at night had become a part of her. 

When she woke up in the night reaching for him, she soothed herself back to sleep the way she’d done before they shared a bed. Back in those hormone-drunk days when any excuse to be alone meant kissing desperately until their jaws ached and their bodies throbbed, hands dipping under clothes for less and less hesitant tastes of flesh. They waited until she thought she’d lose her mind from waiting, and she’d gotten plenty of practice dampening that fire enough to rest at night. 

She wondered at first if it was disrespectful to do this, given everything that was happening. Her hand between her legs while people died a few hundred yards away. She decided it was like bending with Sutha in the mornings, or the mini vacations Aang had made them take during the war. She wrapped herself in memories of him and slept.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: if you don’t know how to end something, you can just meander off into more porn.

Aang couldn’t sleep the night before Katara returned. She was catching a ride with one of the supply caravans, and would be there first thing in the morning. He ended up checking on Appa and then taking his glider out over the city. This usually gave him some perspective, seeing the rings sprawled out from the air like this, but all Aang could think of was the day he and Katara had first learned to glide together, how easily she fit beside him, how thrilling it had been to experience it for the first time through her eyes. After a few distracted laps of the city, the sun finally began to press over the horizon and Aang made a beeline back to the guest house. 

\--

The ride back to the city took about a day, and by the time they landed Katara’s body hummed in anticipation. The second she stepped off the ship Sokka was snatching her in a rough hug. 

“What, no souvenirs? I specifically requested a mug that says, “‘my sister went to Dei Shung and all i got was this stupid fever.’”

She rolled her eyes, but got a little teary in spite of herself. “I missed you too, jerk.”

“I’m really glad you’re back.” he said more solemnly, but her gaze was already trained over his shoulder and she loosened her grip on him as Aang appeared behind him.

Aang seemed almost startled to see her, standing in the courtyard with a dazed expression, glider in one hand, the other half-raised in greeting. Katara was not affected by the same stupor and crossed the courtyard in a few bounding steps to throw herself into his arms. His glider clattered to the ground as he returned the embrace, lifting her off the ground and burying his face in her unbound hair. 

“You’re back.”

“I’m back.”

The smell of her hair and the feel of her tight against his chest shook him out of his daze and, without loosening his grip on her, found her mouth with his own. 

“No problem, we’ll just catch up later then!” Sokka’s irritated voice called across the courtyard, but neither of them noticed. He shook his head as he turned toward town, muttering something about oogies.

Aang’s hands slid up and down Katara’s back, into her hair. After several heated moments, he broke away. 

“You’re ok right? Everything with the village--”

Katara kissed him again, pushing him back and forcing him to retreat a few steps toward the front door. After a moment she broke the kiss enough to whisper “Take me inside.”

\--

Aang didn't realize they'd made it to the bedroom until he was pushing Katara back against the door. 

There was an unreasonable amount of fabric between them, but his fingers managed to find the hem of her dress and graze up her thigh and under the thin cotton of her panties. He found her the wettest she'd ever been for him and groaned helplessly as he pressed into her. She mewled at his touch, grinding against his hand, and a surge of primal, blinding need rushed through him. He needed to slow this down. As badly as he wanted her, he wanted to take her slowly. He pulled his hand back and she let out a sound of protest as her hips tried to follow him. He chuckled and rested his hands on her waist, pressing his forehead against hers and taking a breath to steady himself.

"What's wrong?" She whispered. Her eyes were heavy lidded and her lips swollen. He ran a thumb across them and her tongue darted out to taste it. His breath caught and she smiled wickedly. 

"I want to undress you." His voice was hoarse. She flicked her tongue out to lick her lips and nodded. 

Aang pulled back a step and unfastened the clasps at the neck of her dress. He dragged his hand along her neck and chest to the second fastening under her arm. As he unhooked it, his mouth found her jaw, her throat, her breastbone. He focused on her heartbeat, her shaky breath, all the sweet rhythms of her body he’d missed so much. He pulled back the fabric covering her chest, skimming his hands over her bindings, feeling the gentle swell of her breasts and the hard little peaks at their tips. She arched into his hands with a gasp and his heart rate doubled. He wondered how long he'd be able to draw this out. 

One last clasp and her dress pooled at her feet. He kissed her again, slid his hands down her sides, over her hips, and back up. She reached for the hem of his shirt and he batted her hand away gently. If she pressed her skin against his, his already weak hold on himself would shatter. 

"I missed you" she pleaded against his lips. 

“I missed you too.” He crushed her mouth in a devouring kiss, and she pressed her nearly bare body against his clothed one. He grasped her hips and held her closer against his painful erection. When she rolled against him he almost took her right there, on the floor next to their bed. Instead, he swept her up into his arms and dropped her onto the blankets.

He leaned over her on his forearms, freeing her of her bindings and taking one breast then the other into his mouth. The way she gasped and writhed under him he could tell she was close, just from this. He smiled and slowly, achingly, made his way lower.

"You are an evil man" she panted out, hips bucking involuntarily against the air, looking for release. Arousal had made them both bold, and they watched each other as he slid his mouth down her body.

"Do you know what I thought about most, alone here at night?" he murmured, lips brushing against her stomach. Her bright blue gaze fixed on his and he held it as he breathed her in, coming to rest between her legs. His senses were so full of her he found words spilling out that he hadn’t really intended to say.

"This'' he hummed, running his tongue across her over her underwear as she arched up, letting out a long, shuddering sigh. "The way you taste. The way you smell. Those little sighs you make when I touch you. When I put my mouth on you." Both their breaths hitched at his words. She felt the heat from his breath against her most sensitive skin and her hand found her breast, grasping, pulling, desperate for release. The way she was watching him and touching herself wiped away his plans to draw this out further, and he dragged her panties off her hips. The way she spread for him once she was free of them was the most erotic thing he'd ever seen. 

He slid his hands up her hips and drew his tongue across the length of her, inhaling her sweet musky scent mixed with the sweat that had broken over them both. She shivered and gasped beneath him, and he dipped his tongue into her to taste her. He held her hips steady, taking his time, reacquainting himself with the feel of her as she quivered under his tongue. This was his favorite feeling, her coming undone around him.

He slid a finger into her and her muscles fluttered in response. He heard her moans getting desperate as he exhaled over the hot nub of flesh he’d studiously avoided. She bucked hard against him and let out a strangled sound. 

“Aang,” her voice was strained, her eyes squeezed shut, her body arching desperately off the bed. “Please” she whimpered. Her breath was coming at a gallop, her whole body trembling as he flicked his tongue closer and closer to his target. 

And he gave her what she wanted. His tongue finally found the spot it had carefully avoided, fluttering over her clit as he slid another finger into her. She exploded around him immediately, thrusting and gasping and crying out. He kept up his ministrations as she rode his face and hand through the final shudders of her orgasm, only stopping when she began pulling him up the bed.

He slid back up her body, taking mouthfuls of her skin as he went. His intention was to hold her for a while while she recovered, but she immediately found his mouth, pressing her eager tongue against his. Their legs entwined and her hand drifted down his body. He let her this time, and the brush of her hand against the cloth of his pants sent heady spirals of pleasure through him. She slipped a warm little hand into his pants and he pushed involuntarily against her palm, her mouth, fingers digging into her flesh as he grasped her tightly to him. The control he'd carefully maintained until now was starting to slip, and she smiled against his lips, sensing it. She pushed his shirt over his head and both their hands fumbled with the ties of his pants. Laughing, she pulled back enough to see what she was doing and dragged his trousers and shorts to his ankles in a single motion. He kicked them off as she slid back up his body. Her skin was so warm and she was so beautiful and everything about her felt like home. He cupped her face in his hands as she settled next to him on the pillows, kissing her deep and hungry and slow, savoring the feel of her mouth on his, her nearness, her heat. 

“Three months was too long.” He kissed her again as she pressed closer, sighing, finally flush against him. 

“Let’s make up for it” she murmured, slipping her arms around his neck and pulling him down on top of her. He settled between her legs and she smiled up at him, not shy at all as he took in the sight of her like this, flushed and breathless and ready for him. She rolled her hips up slowly, deliberately. He felt her wet heat against him and eased himself into her, both groaning with relief and desire as the sensations shivered through them. He paused there and she wrapped a leg around him, pulling him deeper and grinding languidly against him. 

“Katara” he moaned in response and thrusted shallowly into her. Ok, maybe this was his favorite feeling. Her head tipped back and she arched as he thrust again, deeper this time. They found their rhythm together, gasping and shuddering against each other as he pressed deeper and deeper into her wet, clutching body. 

A surge of pleasure built where their bodies met and cascaded through her, and she pulled him into a rough kiss, dragging her lips to his ear to bite and suck the sensitive spot just under the lobe. A tremor went through him and he stroked into her harder, trying to find something else to rest his mind on stave off his orgasm but coming up with nothing other than the fact that she was finally here, with him, under him, all around him, where she belonged. 

He was getting dangerously close now. He slid his hand up her thigh to grasp her hip, and searched her face as he pumped into her harder. She groaned and wrapped her other leg around him. 

“Is this--” he panted out.

“Yes,” she gasped, lifting her hips off the bed to meet his eager thrusts. Her hand dipped between them to touch herself, and she cried out, her hips beginning to lose some of their coordination. 

Aang angled his hips to hit the spot he knew would shatter her, and her body seized around his like a vice. He followed her over the edge, plunging into her one last time as he lost control completely. 

He collapsed half on top of her, and after a moment rolled them so that she was pillowed against his chest while they caught their breath. 

“I’m not leaving this room for at least a week,” Katara laughed, snuggling closer.

“A week huh? That’s a pretty long time, I think we’ll run out of things to do.”

Her gaze was warm and playful. “Oh I’m sure you’ll come up with something to entertain us.” She bit her lip and he dipped in to rescue it, sucking it gently into his mouth before kissing her soundly. When he pulled back, he was serious.

“Do you want to talk about it? Dei Shung, everything?”

“Eventually. Later. Now I just want to be here with you. For at least a week.”

He chuckled and kissed her again, nestling them deeper under the blankets to continue celebrating her homecoming.


End file.
